Perceived Stress Level and Sports Participation in Deaf Adolescents and Young Adults

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of sports participation on perceived stress level in deaf adolescents and young adults. A total of 110 deaf people aged between 14 and 25 years participated in the study. The Turkish version of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) was used to assess perceived stress level of the participants. The scale is a 5-item Likert scale and 10-item scale. The scores of PSS-10 consist of 0-40.44 (40.0%) of the participants were female and 66 (60.0%) were male. The mean age of female participants were 16,66 ± 1,36 years and male participants were 17,74 ± 1,65 years. Of the participants, 85 (77.3%) had antenatal and 25 (22.7%) had post-partum hearing impairment. Of the participants, 67 (60.9%) did participate sports and 43 (39.1%) did not participate in sports. No statistically significant difference was found in terms of sex, hearing disability level and having congenital or acquired disability (p> 0.05). The total score of PSS of the athletes were 22,33 ± 6,33 and the total score of the non-athletes were 26,74 ± 3,46. There was a statistically significant difference between the groups (p 0.05). The results of our study showed that the perceived stress levels of deaf adolescents and young adults who participate in sports were lower than compared who did not participate in sports. This study demonstrated sports participation might recommend to adolescents and young adults with hearing impairment for reducing stress.